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The
treatment of President Jefferson Davis by the Federal authorities, after
he was captured near Washington, Ga., in the spring of 1865, and carried
as a prisoner to Fortress Monroe, was a stain on civilization. Here he
was put into an old gunroom with heavy double shutters that were
fastened with cross bars and locks. The side opening had been closed
with fresh masonry, which showed that this damp, unhealthy hole had been
prepared for the especial benefit of this feeble old man.
Two
sentinels with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets paced to and fro across
this small prison. Two other guards and a commissioned officer occupied
the gunroom with the prisoner, and all the openings were securely
fastened. The officer of the day had a key to the, outer door, and
sentinels were posted on the pavement in front of this outer door; and
in addition, there were other sentinels posted on the parapet overhead.
They must have thought that Mr. Davis was an African lion.
Did
they stop here? No, on the
23rd of May, 1865, the officer of the day, Capt. J. Titlow, of the Third
Pennsylvania Artillery, It came to the prison door with two blacksmiths,
bearing a pair of heavy leg-irons that were coupled together with an
enormous chain, and said to the prisoner, "I have been ordered by
General Miles to put these irons upon you." Mr. Davis asked if
General Miles had given that order. He was answered in the affirmative.
Then Mr. Davis asked If he could see General Miles, and Captain
Titlow replied that he had just left General Miles, who was leaving the
fort. Mr. Davis then asked Captain Titlow if the execution of the order
could not be postponed until General Miles returned; to this Captain
Titlow gave the prisoner to understand, that these were his orders, and
he as an officer and soldier must carry them out. To these words Mr.
Davis remarked that this was "not such an order as a soldier could
give or a soldier should receive."
A
Captain Titlow with several guards and the two blacksmiths proceeded to
carry out their orders. When Mr. Davis made a feeble resistance, several
of the guards cocked their guns and leveled them on the feeble old man.
Captain Titlow ordered them at once not to fire, and four stalwart
soldiers were brought in unarmed, and were ordered to seize Mr. Davis
and overpower him, and the blacksmiths put the heavy irons on his
ankles. When this brutal
act was being done, no doubt this educated soldier and patriot,
Jefferson Davis, said:
"Stop,. soldier, stop: this cruel
act Will ring through all the land,
Shame on the hearts that planned the
deed, Shame on the coward hand
That drops the sword of justice
bright To grasp these iron rings;
On them, not me, dishonor falls,
To them this dark shame clings.
"O Mexico, on thy red
fields I battled midst the fray;
My riflemen, with steady aim,
Won Beuna Vista's day.
And standing proud in conscious
worth, I represent my land,
And that Lost Cause for which she
bled. Lofty, heroic, grand."
Now
as to the vicious feeling entertained by some Northern men in authority
and the false and unmanly way in which they tried to connect President
Davis with the treatment of Federal prisoners at Andersonville, Ga., I
will show you. the desperate straits to which they were driven to make
an opportunity to slack their thirst in Southern gore.
The
commandant of the Andersonville prison was one Captain Wirz, a wounded
Confederate soldier who was not able for service in the field. At the
surrender of General Johnston's army, Captain Wirz was included as a
prisoner of war .
The
authorities at Washington had him arrested and confined in jail in that
city, and brought before a court martial presided over by Gen. Lew
Wallace. The judge advocate was Colonel Chapman, who had him condemned
by false witness, and executed on the 10th day of November, 1865.
Captain Wirz was defended by a lawyer by the name of Louis Schade, who
was also a Northern man. I will introduce a letter written by Mr. Schade
sixteen months after the execution of Captain Wirz; it was published to
the world, and replies invited, but none ever came. The following is the
letter in full:
“Intending
to leave the United States for some time, I feel it my duty, before I
start, to fulfill in part a promise which a few hours before his death I
gave to my unfortunate client, Captain Wirz, who was executed at
Washington on the 10th day of November, 1865. Protesting up to the last
moment his innocence of those monstrous crimes with which he was
charged, he received my word, that, having failed to save him from a
felon's doom, I would, as long as I lived, do everything in my power to
clear his memory.
"I
did that the more readily, as I was then perfectly convinced that he
suffered wrongfully. Since that time, his unfortunate children, both
here and in Europe, have constantly implored me to wipe out the terrible
stains which now cover the name of their father. Though the times do not
seem propitious for obtaining full justice, yet, considering that man is
mortal, I will, before entering upon a perilous voyage, perform my duty
to those innocent orphans, and also to myself.
"
I will now give a brief statement of the causes which led to the arrest
and execution of Captain Wirz:
"
In April, 1865, President Johnson issued a proclamation stating that
from evidence in the possession of the Bureau of Military Justice, it
appeared that Jefferson Davis was implicated in the assassination of
Abraham Lincoln and for that reason the President offered a reward of
$100,000 on the capture of the then fugitive ex-president of the
Southern Confederacy. That testimony has since been found to be entirely
false and a mere fabrication, and the suborner, Conover, is now under
sentence in the jail of this city, the two perjurers whom he suborned
having turned State's evidence against him, whilst the individual by
whom Conover was suborned has not yet been brought to justice.
"Certain
high and influential enemies of Jefferson Davis, either then already
aware of the character of the testimony of those witnesses, or not
thinking their testimony quite sufficient to hang Jefferson Davis,
expected to find the wanting material in the terrible mortality of the
Union prisoners at Andersonville. Orders were issued accordingly to
arrest a subaltern officer, Captain Wirz, a poor, friendless, and
wounded prisoner of war (he being included in the surrender of General
Johnston), and besides a foreigner by birth.
"On
the 7th of May he was placed in the old Capital prison at Washington,
and from that time the greater part of the Northern press was busily
engaged in forming the unfortunate man in the eyes of the Northern
people into such a monster that it became almost impossible for him to
obtain counsel. Even his countryman, the Swiss Consul General, publicly
refused to accept money to defray the expenses of the trial. He was
doomed before he was heard, and even the permission to be heard
according to law was denied him. To increase the excitement and give
eclat to the proceedings, and to inflame still more the public mind, the
trial took place under the very dome of the Capitol of the nation.
"A
military commission, presided over by one of the most f arbitrary and
despotic generals in the country, was formed, and, the paroled prisoner
of war, his wounds still open, and so feeble that he had to recline
during the trial on a sofa, carried before the same. How that trial was
conducted, the whole world knows. The enemies of generosity and.
humanity believed it then a sure thing to get at Jefferson Davis.
"Therefore,
the first charge was that of a conspiracy between Wirz, Jefferson Davis,
Seddon, Howell Cobb, R. B. Winder, and a number of others, to kill the
Union prisoners. The trial lasted for three months, but unfortunately
for the bloodthirsty instigators, not a particle of evidence was
produced showing the existence of such a conspiracy; yet Captain Wirz
was found guilty of that charge. Having thus failed, another effort was
made.
"On
the night before the execution of the prisoner a telegram was sent to
the Northern press from this city, stating that Wirz had made important
disclosures to Gen. L. C. Baker, the well known detective, implicating
Jefferson Davis, and that the confession would probably be given to the
public. On the same evening some parties came to the confessor of Wirz,
Rev. Father Boyle, and also to me, one of them informing me that a high
Cabinet officer wished to assure Wirz that if he would implicate
Jefferson Davis with the atrocities committed at Andersonville, his
sentence would be commuted. He, the messenger, or whoever he was,
requested me to inform Wirz of this. In presence of Father Boyle, I told
Wirz next morning what had happened.
The captain simply and quietly replied: " Mr. Schade, you
know that I have always told you that I do not know anything about
Jefferson Davis. He had no connections with me as to what was done at
Andersonville. I knew
anything about him, I would not become a traitor against him or anybody
else, even to save my life."
He
likewise denied that he had made any statement whatever to General
Baker. Thus ended the attempt to suborn Captain Wirz against Jefferson
Davis. That alone shows what a man he was. How many of his defamers
would have done the same? Two hours later, with his wounded arm in a
sling, the poor paroled prisoner mounted the scaffold. His last words
went that he died innocent and so he did. The 10th day 0f November,
1865, will indeed be a black stain upon the pages of American history.
"To
weaken the effects of his declaration of innocence, and of the noble
manner in which Wirz died, a telegram was manufactured here and sent
North, stating that on the 27th of October, Mrs. Wirz (who was actually
900 miles away from Washington on that day) had been prevented by that
Stantonian deus ex machina, Gen. L. C. Baker, from poisoning her
husband. Thus. on the same day when the unfortunate family lost their
husband and father, a cowardly and atrocious attempt was made to blacken
their character also. On the next day I branded the whole as an infamous
lie, and since then I never have heard 0f it again, though it emanated
from a brigadier-general of the United States Army.
"All
those who were charged with having conspired with Captain Wirz have
since been released. except Jefferson Davis, the prisoner of the
American Castle of Chillon. Captain
Winder was let off without trial, and if any of the others have been
tried, which I do not know, certainly none of them have been hung. As
Captain Wirz could not conspire alone, nobody will now, in view of that
important fact, consider him guilty of that charge. So much then, for
charge No. 1.
"As
to charge No.2, to wit, murder, in violation of the laws and customs of
war, I do not hesitate to declare that about 145 out of 160 witnesses on
both sides declared during the trial I that Captain Wirz never murdered
or killed any Union prisoners, with his own hands or otherwise. All
those witnesses (about I twelve to fifteen) who testified that they law
Captain Wirz kill a prisoner, have sworn falsely, abundant proofs of
that assertion being in existence. The hands of Captain Wirz are clear
of the blood of prisoners of war. He would certainly have at least
intimated to me a knowledge of the alleged murders with which l he was
charged.
"In
most all cases no names of the alleged murdered men could be given, and
where it was done, no such persons could be identified. The terrible
scene in court, when he was confronted with one of the witnesses, the
latter insisting that Wirz was the man who killed a certain Union
prisoner, which irritated the prisoner so much that he almost fainted,
will still be I remembered.
"That man (Grey) swore falsely, and God alone knows what the poor
innocent prisoner must have suffered at that moment. That scene was
depicted and illustrated in the Northern newspapers as if Wirz had
broken down on account of his guilt. Seldom has mortal suffered more
than that friendless and forsaken man.
"Fearing
lest this communication will be too long, I will merely speak of the
principal and most intelligent of these false witnesses, who testified
to individual murder on the part of Captain Wirz. Upon his testimony the
Judge Advocate in his final argument laid particular stress on account
of his intelligence.
"This witness prepared also
pictures of the alleged cruelties of Wirz, which were handed to the
Commission, and are now on record, copies of which appeared at the time
In Northern illustrated papers. He swore that his name was Felix de la
Baume, and represented himself as a Frenchman, and grand nephew of
Marquis Lafayette. After having so well testified and shown so much
zeal, he received a recommendation signed by the members of the
Commission.'
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